


The Girl from Nowhere

by SouthSideStory



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post TLJ, Reylo - Freeform, Tags May Change, Warnings May Change, background finnrose - Freeform, force skype
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:07:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: Rey doesn’t like keeping secrets. It isn’t something she ever had to do on Jakku, because she hadn’t known anyone well enough for them to want her closest held truths. But now there are so many things she has to keep hidden: her bond with Ben, Snoke’s death, her weaknesses as a Jedi and a teacher. She has to be strong for the Resistance, more than human, not a girl with flaws and faults like any other. Because she isn’t like any other, and she knows that now. Ben taught her that much, at least.Even as the war tears them apart, the Force brings them together. In darkness, Rey follows the light, and finds her way back to Ben Solo again and again.





	1. Prologue: A Pauper's Grave

.

.

Jakku hadn’t changed a bit. It was all as Rey remembered: the sun just as searing, the air as dry, the people as selfish and desperate. The galaxy’s garbage bin, where junk was left to rot.

She found her parents’ grave on the outskirts of town, so close to the place where she’d spent years bargaining for her daily bread, waiting for a family already laid to rest. Rey remembered coming here once when she was five or six, just a few days after her parents had sold her to Unkar Plutt. She’d buried it down, deeper than the single grave that held their bodies.

The spot was marked by a stripped down cruiser’s battery. It had been so heavy to her childish arms that she’d been forced to beg an older scavenger to carry it for her. It was a miracle that the shifting sands hadn’t dislodged it.

Rey sat, legs crossed, and pressed her bare hands to the ground. _Breathe,_ Luke would have told her. _Just breathe._

She could feel the decay below the earth, bones stripped of flesh toward no purpose. This wasn’t Ahch-To; her parents’ bodies had never fed new life.

They’d been weak people with rough lives who had loved neither her nor each other. _Your parents threw you away like garbage_ , Ben had said. A nasty thing to toss in her face, and all the more bitter to swallow because it was true.

Rey spent that night in her AT-AT. (A foul-mouthed Twi’lek had taken it for himself, but one swing of her lightsaber near his lekku had the bastard running off.) She could have slept aboard the _Falcon_ , or better yet taken it back to base, but she didn’t want to. She wasn’t ready to leave. Maybe she’d never been ready to leave.

Her hammock was gone, but the Twi’lek had put together a pallet of musty blankets and flight seat cushions. Rey clutched her doll to her chest, looking up at the wall defaced with thousands of tally marks. Each one commemorating a day passed on this desert hell, wasted waiting on people who were here all along, dead and buried.

Rey didn’t cry. She’d shed enough tears for people who had undoubtedly shed none on her.

She was half asleep when she felt the world slow down, her crippled walker hushed to an unnatural silence. And then Ben was there, lying right beside her.

He stared at her with hungry eyes, mouth trembling with want and anger.

“No wonder you wore a mask,” Rey said. “Everything you think shows on your face.”

Ben sat up and snarled, baring his uneven teeth. Rey looked up at him, frozen under the weight of his fury.

“I should be the angry one. It didn’t have to be this way, Ben.”

He laughed, a sound so sharp that it could cut her from across the stars. “No, it didn’t. You could have come with me, ruled with me. And instead you’re doing—what, trying to build a rebellion out of one ship full of fighters?”

Rey didn’t answer, although his assessment was spot on and he had to know it.

Then he softened, settling back to the calm she’d learned to expect from him in the quiet moments when the Force connected them. It was strange, how even keeled he could be with her when the rest of the world only ever saw his rage, as unbridled as an animal’s.

“What do you want?” Rey asked. “You know I won’t join you.”

Ben’s gaze swept over her, taking her in, and Rey felt suddenly exposed. She could be his prey, lying on her back like this; she could be his lover.

He reached for her, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. Rey closed her eyes, a shudder rippling over her body. They’d touched so little since they met that it always felt precious, even when it was only the ghost of him that laid hands on her.

“Come back to me,” he whispered. “Please.”

Ben cupped her cheek now, and Rey clenched her jaw to keep from making some small, pitiful noise. It felt so good to make him beg, to break this powerful man over his need for her—but it was growing so hard to deny him, more difficult every time he asked. Rey leaned into his touch, stealing what comfort she could while he was here. The Force wouldn’t allow them much more time. She could already feel their connection slipping away, the noise of the real world invading this sacred space.

Rey couldn’t give in, but she could give him something.

“I miss you,” she said.

Ben looked down at her, his vulnerable lips parting, but she’d never know what he was going to say, because then he was gone.

Rey held her doll tighter. She’d almost forgotten the principal law of this world, the one that ruled every day of her childhood: the desert only took, never gave.

.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this prologue sounds familiar to you, then you may have read it as the drabble I posted in one of my short collections. This piece has been on my mind a lot over the last year, and I finally feel inspired to expand it!
> 
> Please note that the tags and warnings may change.
> 
> I’d really appreciate it if you took a moment to share your thoughts on this chapter. :)


	2. The Moment Between Breaths

.

.

Rey practiced Form I—Shii-Cho—in the quiet of her hut. It felt unnatural, too steady, too patient. Her first instincts still pushed her toward aggression—or maybe they weren’t her instincts at all. That thread connecting her to Ben still held true, strong as ever despite the space between them.

Rey stopped, extinguished the double blades of her lightsaber, and clipped it to her belt. It was late, but she could tell already that sleep wouldn’t come, so she grabbed her cape and hurried from her hut to the temple, not bothering to pull up her hood. She’d never grow tired of the rain, not after an ever-thirsty childhood on Jakku.

She was soaked by the time she reached the mosaic pool. It was a beautiful thing, kept well preserved thanks to the Caretakers, one image made up of a thousand ivory and obsidian pieces. The pool was her favorite part of the temple, maybe because it held so much room for duality. Black and white within the same picture, light and darkness within the same Jedi. She touched the wet stone, feeling the ridges between its fragments, divided yet together. Like her and Ben.

She beat her fist against the floor, and the whole cavern trembled. She’d had a year to let go of Ben, but she couldn’t, not so long as their minds were tethered. Snoke might have built the bridge between them, but it stood well after his death, and Rey couldn’t find a way to destroy it. Perhaps that was for the best, though, because she wasn’t sure she’d give up that connection if she could.

“Master Rey?”

She turned and found Neshi standing behind her, blue eyes wide. The boy was eighteen, only a few years younger than her, but he looked up to her like a legend. All of them did, thanks to Ben and his lies about Snoke.

“Sorry,” Rey said. “Lost my temper for a moment.”

Neshi nodded, then asked, “You couldn’t sleep?”

Rey stood, pulled her training saber from her belt, and ignited it. A green glow filled the cavern, almost ghoulish, weaker than the bright blue beams of her true lightsaber. “Let’s spar.”

Neshi grinned, lit his own saber, and came at her with a stabbing attack that Rey swept aside with a lazy parry.

_You need a teacher,_ Ben had once told her, in that frozen forest where she’d come to hate him. She still needed a teacher, but she’d had no choice but to become one herself.

.

.

Ahch-To wasn’t the perfect place for a hideout. There were few natural defenses, just wind scoured rocks, open to the elements. The best that could be offered were the caves, so that was where the Resistance made their base, in the tunnels beneath the island. But Ahch-To had one advantage that was impossible to ignore: Ben didn’t know its location. Snoke had pried it from her, but he’d died in the short minutes afterward. Her secret was safe.

The Caretakers were decidedly unhappy with the infestation of humans, Rey most of all. They tolerated her, however, for bringing Force-sensitives back to the island.

Rey spent most of her time training her acolytes. Many were human, but there were a handful of other races as well, all ranging from children to grown men, women, and other folk. They revered her, the girl who had killed the Supreme Leader, but she felt like an imposter. She’d only spent a few days with Luke, very little of it training, and the deed she’d grown famous for was a lie. They called her the last Jedi, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Finn dragged her away from her teaching for a night among friends, and Rey threw herself into eating too much fried fish and drinking too much wine.

“Whoa, there, sailor. Aren’t the Jedi supposed to practice temperance or something?” Finn asked, laughing.

Rey thought of her parents, drinking away their short lives. She hadn’t understood it when she was little, but now she did. Sometimes losing herself for a night was the only way she could stand to wake up the next morning.

_Kill it if you have to_ , Ben had said, and she was trying. She was.

Rey sipped her wine, then said, “I’m not a real Jedi anyway.”

“Don’t say that where Poe can hear,” Finn said. “You’re our best weapon, peanut.”

Rey took another pull from her wine, and this time she more than sipped. She didn’t want to be a weapon, or a teacher, or a legend—which gave her more sympathy for Luke than she’d had when he was alive. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it didn’t much matter. War shaped all of them into something new and unrecognizable.

Rose sat down next to Finn, scowling. She was usually scowling, which only made her smiles more precious.

“What’s wrong?” Finn asked, his voice tender in a particular way that he only ever used with Rose.

“Poe says he wants me on repair duties for the next few days, because I’m needed there more than on tomorrow’s mission.”

Finn touched her shoulder, so gently that Rey had to look away, a hot flare of jealousy awakening in her chest. She didn’t want Finn that way, but she _did_ want what he had with Rose. The kind of love that healed, that lasted. And she knew who she wanted it with, but it didn’t do her any good to think about that.

“Maybe that’s not so bad,” Finn said. “I mean, you’re the best mechanic we’ve got by miles, and we already have a full group for the raid—”

Rose glared up at him. “I know I’m not as good with a blaster as I am a wrench, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be useful.”

“I didn’t say that—”

But Rose was already leaving, and she’d stolen Finn’s plate of shrimp to boot.

Okay. Maybe she wasn’t entirely envious of _everything_ about their love.

Finn looked at Rey, wincing. “That was a stupid thing to say wasn’t it?”

Rey smiled as kindly as she could. “Little bit, yeah.”

Finn sighed. “She won’t stay mad. She never does for long. Well, not with me.”

“That’s because she loves you.”

He ducked his head, smiling. “Yeah. I’m pretty lucky.”

It was easier to be happy for her friends then. Finn had been so lonely for so long; he deserved the love he’d found with Rose.

The Force had been kind enough not to connect her to Ben much when she was around people. So she was surprised when she felt the world constrict, everything around her fading, her attention narrowed to one point.

“I’m gonna go outside,” Rey said. “I’m just a little, um, hot.”

It was too cool in the cave for that lie to be believable, but she hurried away before Finn could call her out on it.

“Have you told them?” Ben asked. “About us.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

His lips twitched in an almost-smile. “Like what?”

Rey hadn’t made it all the way outside, but she was far from her friends, hiding in the darkness, and that was enough. Which was fitting, really. Ben always drew her into the shadows.

“Like we’re…” She shook her head. “More than enemies.”

Ben walked closer to her, cutting through the space between them with that crackling, unstable energy of his, not unlike his lightsaber splitting through a foe.

“Aren’t we?” he asked.

Rey tried to step away from him, but she only backed into the rock wall. “If we were anything besides enemies, there wouldn’t be a bounty on my head the size of Coruscant.”

Ben placed his hand on the wall beside her, bracing himself just inches away. “You didn’t answer my question. Have you told them?”

He was close enough that, had he truly been here with her, present in flesh and not just spirit, she’d be able to feel his breath on her skin.

“Of course I haven’t told them.”

“You could shut me out,” Ben said, “and you’re not doing that either.”

Rey looked down. It shamed her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes when he spoke this way. Low, intimate, in that gentle tone that always softened her toward him.

“I can’t.”

“Don’t,” he said, still quietly. “You’re good at lying to yourself, but you know the truth. You don’t shut me out because you don’t want to.”

Rey didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, when her only options were weakness or dishonesty, and Ben could always see through her. She closed her eyes, praying that he’d leave. Hoping that he’d stay just one moment longer. And in the space between two breaths, he was gone.

.

.

Rey didn’t like keeping secrets. It wasn’t something she’d ever had to do on Jakku, because she hadn’t known anyone well enough for them to want her closest held truths. But now there were so many things she had to keep hidden: her bond with Ben, Snoke’s death, her incompetence as a Jedi and a teacher. She had to be strong for the Resistance, more than human, not a girl with flaws and faults like any other.

Because she wasn’t like any other, and she knew that now. Ben had taught her that much, at least.

In the year since the battle on Crait, the Resistance had grown so much that their resources on Ahch-To were beginning to stretch thin. Their weapons supplies were running low, which necessitated the raid on a small First Order outpost at R’hllor.

“You ready?” Finn asked.

Rey threaded her hair into a braid. She hadn’t bothered to cut it since before Crait, and now it was too cumbersome to stay back in a bun.

“Of course,” she said. “You?”

Finn shrugged. “I’m never ready, but I go anyway.”

Rey knocked her elbow against his arm, grinning. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

She expected him to throw back something snarky in good humor, but he only said, “Yeah, I know you will.”

Rey tied off the end of her braid with steady hands, feeling somewhat lighter. This was why she was here, teaching and fighting. So she could stand beside Finn and her other friends, protecting what she loved.

The mission went smoothly. The outpost was small, more a waystop for fuel and weapons than anything else, as vulnerable as any place under First Order control ever was these days. Most of the stormtroopers on guard died quickly, either by blaster bolts or Rey’s saber, but there was one that gave her pause.

The trooper took off her helmet, revealing a young woman with close-cut orange curls and freckled skin.

“Wait!” she said. “Please, don’t!”

Rey hesitated, gripping her lightsaber tightly, its double ends casting blue light over the girl.

“Are you yielding?”

She got down on one knee before her. “I want to join the Resistance. I think I’m—like you.”

The outpost was burning and dead stormtroopers lay everywhere, their masks more skull-like without life behind them. There wasn’t time for this, to consider the pleading of a desperate enemy. Killing her would be cleaner, easier, safer for everyone.

But if she started murdering people who had yielded, who wanted to become allies, she was no better than Ben.

Rey lowered her lightsaber, let it go out, and returned it to her belt. Then she held out her hand and _reached_ , feeling through the girl’s thoughts without touching her.

_Mama was hungry and Papa was gone, so she sent Ciril with the men in skeleton clothes._

_Then she wasn’t Ciril anymore. Just HN-7337._

_HN-6585 called her Carrots for her hair, but her superiors said she was the perfect soldier. Best with a blaster and melee weapons, always the top of her class in everything. The ideal stormtrooper._

_She was good at fighting, and she’d move up the ranks someday, if she could just get through this shit detail on R’hllor._

_Then, two days after the battle on Crait, she lifted a rock without touching it, and maybe, if she was lucky, she could get out. Break free—_

That was all Rey needed to see. She drew back, breathing hard, releasing Ciril’s mind as gently as she could. The girl still whined, clutching her temples, tears streaking down her face. It made Rey feel sick, using the Force this way, but she couldn’t risk the Resistance on faith in a stranger.

Maybe she wasn’t better than Ben anyway.

Rey held out her hand. “I’m sorry I had to do that, but I needed to know that you were telling the truth.”

Ciril wiped at her cheeks, sniffed, and took Rey’s hand. She’d suffered worse than a mind probe, and she shook it off faster than most did.

Once they were aboard the _Falcon_ , supplies secured in the cargo hold, Finn said, “Poe’s not gonna like this.”

“Poe will get over it.” She took the pilot’s seat, then looked up at him. “She’s like you, Finn. And like me too. I couldn’t just leave her.”

Finn tugged on her braid. “You never leave anyone behind if you can help it.”

“Neither do you.”

It was impossible not to think of Starkiller, how Finn, Han, and Chewie had come back for her.

And Kylo using the Force on her while she’d been locked in that interrogation chair. She’d been terrified, humiliated, and angrier than she’d ever been in her life, having her private memories rifled through by a monster. But there was more there too, that she’d felt when she’d turned the Force back on him and found a loneliness so close to her own: compassion, connection, and something more difficult to define.

_Don’t be afraid. I feel it too._

“Rey?”

She smiled for Finn. “Let’s go home?”

He patted her shoulder. “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

Finn was right. Poe didn’t like the fact that she’d brought a stormtrooper back with them, and when she told him how she’d ensured Ciril’s honesty, he liked that even less.

“I know the Force isn’t exactly my wheelhouse, but that’s what Kylo Ren does. There’s nothing light in that as far as I can see.”

“You’re not wrong,” Rey said, “but there’s nothing light in killing either. I don’t think you’d tell me not to do _that_ in the middle of a war.”

Poe shook his head. “This is different.”

“It’s not,” Rey said, though she wasn’t sure she was right. “I’m not falling to the dark, if that’s what you’re worried about. If I was going to, I’d have done it already.”

If Ben’s offer to rule together, to _be_ together, hadn’t turned her away from the light, then nothing could.

That night, Rey lay alone in her hut, curled up on a pallet on the floor. It wasn’t comfortable, but it beat a sandy hammock or a stone bench. She read by firelight, working through one of the Jedi books. This one was written in an old dialect of Suul, which Rey was only half fluent in, and the ink had faded to nearly nothing over time. Still, it was her favorite of the bunch, because half its lessons were in verse. It was as much art as history.

She whispered her favorite of the poems aloud. “The moment between breaths is the balance of the Force—” She knew Ben was there now, had felt his presence as soon as the Force brought him to her, but it couldn’t hurt him to hear this, so she continued. “Between life and death. Rest and action. Serenity and passion. Hope and despair.”

Rey closed the book and looked over at him. He was lying beside her this time, shirtless. In bed, then, wherever he was.

“Trying to convert me?” he asked, and Rey snorted.

She ought to hate his dry humor, but it nearly always made her laugh. Unless there was cruelty behind it directed at her, as there sometimes was.

“Hardly,” Rey said. “Only you can come back to the light. I can’t make that choice for you. Much as I’d like to.”

“Really?” Ben asked. “Even now, after all I’ve done to your precious Resistance. You still think there’s hope for me to come to your side?”

“It’s not _my_ side,” Rey said. “It’s the light. It’s what you’re meant for, Ben, and you’d see that if you weren’t so… lost.”

He grabbed the book from her hands and tossed it aside.

Rey smacked his arm, “Watch it! That book is older than—”

Then she stopped. He’d taken her book from her, as if he was really here. He’d interacted with her surroundings, and now Rey could see a flicker of his room. A narrow bed with dark covers, durasteel walls, simple furniture in black—

“Can you see where I am?” Rey asked, scrambling away from him.

Ben’s brown eyes widened, and she knew that her hut was no more a secret than his bedroom now. He grabbed her arm, _pulling_ with the Force, the way you’d move a stubborn object—

Rey didn’t have time to think, to fight, and when she opened her eyes—when had she even closed them?—she wasn’t in her bed on Ahch-To.

She was lying beside Ben Solo, the softness of his sheets as real as his hand on her arm.

.

.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe TLJ came out a year ago today! Maybe that's why I'm getting all the canon Reylo feels...
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if you could take a moment to let me know what you thought, I'd really appreciate it. :)


	3. Only in Dreams

.

.

Her hut on Ahch-To was gone entirely. She couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. The air was cold and it smelled of nothing, same as on the _Finalizer_ and the _Supremacy_. Ben’s bed was surprisingly small to belong to a Supreme Leader, the mattress hard. And his grip on her arm felt _real_ , not like when they’d touched through the Force before.

Ben let go of her arm, but only so he could put his hand on her chest, just above her left breast.

“I can feel your heartbeat,” he said.

Rey backed away, but she hit the wall. His hand fell to her bare knee, and she wished dearly that she’d worn more than a long nightshirt to bed. His touch was hot on her skin, the weight of his hand heavy as it trailed up to her lower thigh. He didn’t go any further, and Rey was thankful. She didn’t want to know whether she’d have had the strength to tell him to stop if he wanted more.

Or to find out whether or not he’d listen if she did. She thought he would; she hoped.

“Am I really here?” Rey asked.

Ben pulled his hand away, like he'd only just noticed that he'd been touching her. That should have been a relief, but it wasn't.

“I don't know,” he said, in that curious, hesitant tone his voice took on when he was trying to puzzle something out.

Rey pinched her arm, the way she might do to wake herself up from a lingering nightmare, but she remained in Ben’s bed, not her own.

“This can’t be happening,” she said. “This is _not_ how the Force works!”

Ben caught her wrist, his grip on her strong enough that it almost hurt. Too much, this was too much, and when he rubbed his thumb across her pulse point, she shivered.

“The Force never has played by the rules for us,” he whispered.

Rey tried to push him off of her, but nothing happened. She couldn’t use the Force here, same as always when they were connected, thank gods. It meant she was back on Ahch-To, no matter how real this seemed.

Ben released her wrist, frowning. “I guess that answers your question.”

Disappointment rang in his voice, and Rey tried not to see anything into it. He’d wanted her here, drawn to him—but of course he did. She was his enemy, and having her in his territory would save him a manhunt.

“If we were really together, what would you do?” Rey asked.

Ben looked away. “If you won’t join me, there’s only one thing I could do.”

Rey picked at his sheets, feeling the softness of them between her fingers. “I guess so. I did kill Snoke after all.”

Even in profile she could see him trying not to smile. “Indeed. You’re the most wanted woman in the galaxy.”

Rey crossed her legs lotus style, and for a long moment his gaze flickered down, lingering on her bare skin. She didn’t have to wonder what he was thinking, and that knowing sent a wave of warmth over her.

“If you’d come with me, you’d have been in my bed that night,” she said.

Ben’s eyes widened, brown and beautiful. It was criminal that a man like him had such eyes, capable of making her feel open and exposed every time he looked at her.

“You’re going to seduce me back to the light? That isn’t really the Jedi way.”

He was trying to ridicule her, but his voice came out too weak for it to work.

“No. Just telling truths,” Rey said. “Not that it matters now.”

Ben stiffened, his face blank. His lying face, not that he could ever maintain it for long. “What makes you think I want you like that?”

Rey tried very hard not to laugh. “You’ve wanted me _like that_ since you saw me on Takodana.”

His neutral expression crumbled, his cheeks pink in a way that made her want to kiss him. She’d never seen anything as beautiful as Ben Solo, no matter what ugly things he did.

“And what about you?” he asked.

Rey shrugged. “I fell in love with you when we touched hands.”

That should have been difficult to say, but it wasn’t. She’d known for a long time now, and it didn’t matter if Ben knew; it wouldn’t change him. Nothing would change him until he wanted it for himself.

Ben’s hand twitched, ready to touch her again, but he made a fist instead.

“Love or not, you picked the Resistance,” he said. “So you don’t love me enough.”

“You’ve got it backwards. I love you enough to keep you from destroying everything that might save you. So you can come home on your own.”

Rey touched his cheek, the barest brush of her fingers, close enough to his full lips that he’d barely have to turn to kiss her.

He didn’t, of course.

Rey closed her eyes, and as quick as a candle flickering out, she woke on her pallet in her hut. Stone walls around her instead of durasteel, the air rich with the scents of smoke and rain. She was lying down, and she knew her body had been asleep while her spirit had been with Ben, lost in the sweetest sort of dream.

.

.

Rey’s heart raced all morning, quickened by the nervousness she should have felt last night. What had she been thinking? Telling Ben she’d have opened her legs for him. That she _loved_ him. Those were secrets she should have saved until he came back to the light. If he came back.

Meditation didn’t soothe her, nor did breakfast, and that was when Rey knew her day wouldn’t be salvaged. If food couldn’t help her feel better then nothing would.

She put Juna in charge of the other acolytes. She wasn’t the first of Rey’s students, but she was the strongest and the oldest, a woman of forty-three who mothered the others.

Juna bound up her long braids into a bun, dark eyes narrowed.

“Are you all right?”

Rey stood straighter. “Of course. I just need a… break. And I trust you to keep the others in line while I take a day.”

Juna smiled and said, “Oh, I will. Oola needs a kick in the ass and Tarlock could benefit from about three hours of meditation.”

Rey had to smile back. “That should keep them from complaining about my methods.”

“Just looking out for you.”

Rey went to the open cave where the X-wings were grounded and found the mechanics doing repairs. All but Rose, who was building something new.

“Is that what it looks like?”

Rose climbed out from underneath the starfighter she’d been working on, grinning.

“If you think it looks like a TIE silencer, then yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Well, my take on it.”

Rey touched the silver wing. It seemed she couldn’t get away from Ben, no matter how she tried.

“How’d you get the plans?” Rey asked. “Only Kylo and a handful of First Order ace pilots have silencers.”

Rose frowned. “You call him Kylo? That’s a little… familiar.”

Rey froze, breathing in, breathing out. Dammit.

It would be fantastic if Rose was a little less blunt, but that wasn’t her.

“Sometimes. Anyway, how’d you build this thing?”

Rose was still looking at her oddly, but she said, “I don’t have the plans, but I’ve seen silencers in action, how they’re shaped and how they move. This won’t replicate one completely, but I think it’ll be just as fast and agile.”

Rey whistled. “That’s really something. Poe’s going to take out so many TIE fighters with this thing.”

“That’s the goal.” Rose patted the side of the silencer. “If you want to help finish her up, I wouldn’t say not to the company.”

“No, she’s your baby,” Rey said. “Besides, you’re better at this than me. I only know how to pick apart garbage and throw it back together.”

“There are advantages to knowing how to salvage. Makes you creative.” Rose pointed toward an X-wing that looked worse for the wear. “But if you want to work with junk, that one could use some attention.”

“I’ll get on it.”

Rose smiled again. “I can’t believe I get to boss around a Jedi.”

“This is your domain,” Rey said. “You ever want to handle a lightsaber, I’ll give you lessons.”

“I don’t think so. I like my arms just where they are.”

Rey spent the rest of the morning getting her hands dirty, but she was interrupted in the early afternoon by one of the mechanics banging on the X-wing she was working underneath.

“You better come quick! There’s a galaxy-wide First Order broadcast, and Sheera’s got it pulled up.”

Rey didn’t need telling twice. She climbed out from beneath the X-wing and hurried through the warren of twisting tunnels to the cave that had been designated the war room. Sheera had somehow rigged a handful of datapads up to the holonet by routing their connection through other worlds’ systems, so that their location wouldn’t be traceable. Or something. That was a level of tech proficiency above what Rey had been able to learn on Jakku.

She pushed Poe out of the way to get a better look, her heart racing.

Kylo Ren was on the screen, the masked creature that could have come right out of her nightmares. He’d taken to wearing a helmet again, almost identical to his old one. Her Ben, but not. When he spoke, his deep voice was distorted, twisted by the vocoder in a way that sent twin thrills of fear and want over her.

“You’ve committed treason, and the penalty is death,” Ben said.

Two stormtroopers pushed General Hux to his knees. He made no noise, but tears streamed down his red face and his lips trembled. Whoever was handling the cameras made sure to catch every weakness, stealing the last of Hux’s dignity just before he lost his life. Rey might have felt bad for him, had he not engineered the destruction of the Hosnian system.

Finn sounded gleeful when he whispered, “I never thought I’d say this, but Kylo Ren is finally doing something right.”

Rey watched every move Ben made, the proud set to his shoulders as he drew his lightsaber, how he strode over to Hux with purpose, even exhilaration. She didn’t need to feel him to know he was excited, that this was a moment he’d looked forward to for a long time.

He didn’t give Hux the chance for any last words, only lit his saber and brought it down in a swift arc. Rey doubted she’d ever forget the sight of that sparking, scarlet blade separating Hux’s head from his neck. It rolled perhaps a foot away, but Ben didn’t let it get far. He snatched it up from the ground and held it high, a prize for his people to see.

“Remember your loyalty to the Order, to your Supreme Leader,” he shouted.

The rest didn’t need to be said, not when the price for treason hung from Ben’s grasping fingers by ginger hair.

A sea of stormtroopers chanted back, “Long live the Supreme Leader!”

Rey backed away from the screen, so sick that she had to grasp her stomach, trying to soothe the twisting ache there. Ben was as lost as ever, steeped in darkness, and only falling farther by the day.

She couldn’t watch any more.

Rey retreated—there was no other word for it—to her hut. She sat on her pallet, breathing in, breathing out, reaching for the life and light on the island. She found it in the growing green, among fish swimming in the shallows, from the wan sunlight peeking through the clouds. There was darkness too, but Rey didn't want that just now—which only dredged up its presence with greater strength. She could feel the shadows under the island calling to her, whispering secrets so quietly that she'd have to come close to hear them.

Tempting. The darkness was always tempting; that was its nature. A lesson Ben had taught her better than any mirror ever could.

.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you thought, if you have a moment to comment. :)


	4. There Is Only Passion

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Rey sat by the mosaic pool, running her fingers through the water. Tracing the fractured stones, feeling their edges; light and darkness, two sides of the same coin.

She felt Ben’s presence behind her, but she didn’t turn to face him.

“What happened with Hux?”

Ben sat across from her on the other side of the pool. He was wearing his helmet, and when he spoke, his voice was lowered and misshapen by the vocoder. As powerful as it was wrong, and she wished that it didn’t appeal to some part of her.

“The idiot tried to betray me. He always underestimated the power of the Force, and it got him killed.”

Rey looked down at the pool, moonlight rippling over its waters, silver and shadow. “I assume he wasn’t alone. Overturning a Supreme Leader is hardly a one-man job.”

“True.”

 _True._ That was all he’d give her, as if Hux’s machinations had ended with his severed head. As if that wouldn’t worry her, when he knew she loved him.

“Aren’t you concerned that others were colluding with him?” Rey asked.

“What makes you think I haven’t already rooted out the other traitors and taken care of them?”

She looked up into the glass on his mask where eyes should be, black mirrors that showed nothing. “It must be tiring, always looking over your shoulder.”

“I’m sure you could tell me all about that,” Ben said. “The Resistance does little but run these days.”

“The Resistance—” She bit her lip. “I’m not telling you anything about the Resistance.”

“You’re right. We shouldn’t talk about sides.” He canted his head, like he did when he was taking the measure of someone, or reading their mind. “Do you make your own clothes?”

Rey plucked at her tunic. “My clothes?”

“Yes. Do you sew them by hand?”

It was odd and disconcerting, hearing such a mundane question from him.

“Are you saying my clothes are ugly?”

“No. I like them. I was just curious.”

He was smiling. That almost-smirk that made him look more mean than amused. Rey couldn’t see it, but it showed in his voice.

“If this is your idea of small talk, you’re no good at it.”

“Neither are you,” he said. “But I suppose that’s to be expected, all things considered.”

Considering that she’d had no raising. That she’d grown up alone and unmannered. He wasn’t wrong, and that was the part that stung.

Rey raised her fingers to her mouth and brushed the water there across her lips. Just thinking about Jakku made her thirsty.

“I used to go days without talking,” she said. “I’d scavenge, clean whatever salvage I’d scraped together, and hand it over to Plutt without a word. Bargaining is pointless when someone owns you. Though I suppose you already know that well enough.”

Ben said nothing, did nothing. Then he took off his helmet and set it aside. He seemed, more than anything, tired. Even in the darkness she could see the hollow look in his eyes, the kind of exhaustion that only loneliness could bring.

Rey leaned forward and said, “I know you killed him because you wanted to be free, but you can’t tell me that you truly wanted to become Supreme Leader. The bureaucracy, the responsibility for an entire galaxy—”

Ben swiped his hand through the air, cutting down her words. “That isn’t why I killed him. Not fully.”

Rey frowned. “Then why—?”

“To protect you! So that _we_ could be free. Together.”

His lips trembled, and Rey heard, as if he’d whispered it just now, the most tempting thing anyone had ever offered her: a simple _please._

“We can still be together, Ben. I promise. It isn’t too—”

He looked away. “It is too late. You made your choice. I made mine.”

It always came to this. Every discussion, every argument, every confession. In the end, it unwound to the same thing.

She stood, walked around the pool, and sat beside him. Close enough that they could touch, but neither of them tried.

“I do sew my clothes,” Rey said. “I had to on Jakku, if I didn’t want to run around naked. And now…” She shrugged. “Now I don’t have to, but I like it.”

Ben reached for her hand, but in the moment before his gloved fingers could meet her bare skin, the Force had stolen him away.

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Rey felt Leia before she saw her. A steady pulse of light, warm and soothing. And there was something else, a hint of chaos on the edges of her harmony, that recalled her son’s signature in the Force. She met with Rey and Poe in the war room. Just the three of them, since Finn was on a mission.

“What did the Salandryans say?” Poe asked.

“They won’t commit,” Leia said. “Until we make a more powerful move against the First Order, they’re too afraid to back us.”

Poe knocked his knuckles against the driftwood table, rapping out an impatient rhythm. “Same as the Yennish.”

“We can’t let a few skittish people dictate our strategy,” Rey said. “We don’t have the numbers to take on the First Order head on. Not yet.”

Rey wasn’t ready either. A battle with the might of the First Order meant a battle with Ben, and she didn’t know if she could bring herself to fulfill her duty to the Resistance—and to the galaxy, to the light.

“We’ve faced worse odds and come out on top.” Poe waved upward, toward the island above them. “And we’ve got a whole crop of Jedi now. You took down Snoke on your own. If you’d just let them fight—”

Rey stood. “No. They’re not ready.”

Poe stood too and pointed to the middle of her chest. “Were you ready when you fought Kylo Ren? Or when you cut the head off the First Order?”

“That’s different. I didn’t—” _I didn’t do half of that._ “I didn’t have any choice. It was fight or die. My students are still learning, and…” Rey felt herself blush, but she said, “I know it sounds terrible, but they’re not picking up the ways of the Force at the same pace as I have. Throwing them into battle now would get half of them killed, but if we just wait a few months they’ll be much stronger.”

“I agree with Rey,” Leia said. “Patience is the key here.”

Poe half smiled. “Patience. My greatest virtue.”

“As for the immediate problem of allies, I have a meeting with Trandashi Kallor next week, and I expect she’ll be more receptive to us than the Salandryans were.” Leia tugged at the end of her long braid, then looped it around her fingers. “I’ll need to rest until then.”

Rey looked away. Leia’s health had been declining since Crait, so much so that she’d handed the leadership of the Resistance over to Poe months ago. She did what she could, and pulling on her many political strings across the galaxy was no small matter, but she was still weakening. Rey knew that her first concern should be for Leia herself, then for the Resistance, but in truth, she worried most for Ben. He’d need to come back to the light soon for any chance to reconcile with his mother. Maybe that wouldn’t be possible, but Rey thought it might. She hoped.

She always hoped. It was like to get her killed one day.

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Her bond with Ben waxed and waned, sometimes opening just for moments, other times long enough for her to forget how ephemeral these meetings were—until the Force took him away, as it always did. Usually, she saw only her own surroundings, as it had been in the beginning. But there were the dreams-but-not as well, when she went to him while her body rested. Ben might be experiencing the same, but if so he said nothing of it, and Rey tried not to worry. Even if he saw the inside of her hut, or the ocean at low tide, it told him nothing valuable about Ahch-To. The Resistance was safe.

She’d always been so good at lying to herself. She prayed she wasn’t lying now.

Thirteen days after Hux’s execution, Rey lay awake on her pallet, unable to sleep. Worrying about Ben, again. All of the Resistance’s spies reported that the First Order had grown fractious and disordered since Snoke’s death. Ben inspired more fear than his master ever had, but before he’d taken the mantle of Supreme Leader, he’d only been an attack dog. He had no leadership experience, and he was unpredictable and volatile, as likely to turn his rage on his allies and underlings as his enemies.

The First Order was falling apart, which was good news for the Resistance, but not for Rey. Hux might be dead, but Ben’s people were still terrified and discontented. They would turn on him. It was a matter of _when_ , not _if_ , and he was too arrogant to see it. Or maybe he just didn’t care, ready to burn everything to the ground, including himself.

Rey groaned. She couldn’t sleep like this, with her mind so full of unwanted thoughts. Now that she lived on Ahch-To, imagining this very ocean and island no longer brought the same comfort. This wasn’t the paradise she’d imagined it to be. Nothing was as she’d imagined it to be, when she’d been a scavenger robbing graves. Least of all Ben.

He was beautiful and brave and beyond her reach. These days, her most comforting dreams were about him. Touching him and being touched. Holding him and being held. She squeezed her thighs together, and realized that this would be one of the nights when she gave in to her less innocent fantasies.

Sometimes she pictured lying with him in a soft bed, somewhere quiet and isolated, with the war behind them. It was easy to pretend that they were at peace then, no conflict between them anymore. Free to make love without consequences.

Not tonight, though. Rey wanted him here right now, just as they both were in the moment. He’d undress her first, she was certain, so she took off her clothes and prayed that no one would come knocking at this hour. Then she pulled her blanket over her body, reached down between her legs, and touched herself. Ben’s fingers would be larger than hers, but she closed her eyes and tried not to think about that. He’d never done this with her before—and as lonely as she knew he was, perhaps he’d never done it at all. So she started out a bit clumsy, not as expert as her own fingers could be, the way she thought Ben might their first time. But he’d listen to her moans, pay attention to the way she responded, until he found the right rhythm. Tight circles that slowly drove her higher, until she was ready for him. Close, closer, almost—

Suddenly, it felt like he was here with her, the whole world quiet except for her panting, the warmth of his presence so close.

“ _Ben._ ”

Then she heard the echo of his breath. She jerked her hand away from herself and jolted upright, holding the blanket to her chest. Ben sat beside her, shirtless, his feet bare, wearing only loose black pants.

Rey tried to speak, but her mouth opened and closed on nothing. She could deny what she’d been doing and try to save her pride. It wouldn’t work, though. There was no way he hadn’t seen.

“How long were you there?” she asked.

“Not long.” He bit the inside of his lip, a muscle in his cheek working. “I was about to tell you I was here.”

She wondered if he’d heard her say his name, but there was no way to ask without admitting to it.

There was a vicious hunger in his gaze, impossible to mistake for anything else. He liked what he’d seen, and he wanted more of it.

“Can I touch you?” he asked, his voice low, almost choked.

This was too much, too far. Something they’d never be able to come back from if she said yes. Rey knew she shouldn’t want that, but she did. No matter what path Ben had chosen, it only felt right to share her body with the man she loved.

Her heart beat hard in her chest, her legs quivering, but she nodded.

Ben grasped her blanket and pulled it away from her slowly. She let it go, allowing him to uncover her. If someone peeked around the cloth over her window, would they see Ben here, or a blanket unveiling her body of its own accord? She didn’t know how real he was, or if it would count if he touched her. When he put his hand on her thigh, he felt solid and true, as if he was actually here. Maybe they could even make love this way.

She let him run his hand up her thigh, and when his fingers reached her pubic hair, she parted her legs. She’d never seen him so focused, all his wild energy concentrated for once, as he looked at her.

“You’re beautiful,” Ben said, his fingers sliding down, through the wet there. He shuddered. “I can feel you, like I’m really here.”

It was almost as though she’d been sleeping all her life, and that she only came alive under Ben’s touch. She bit back a moan and arched up, begging him without words. He took pity on her and pushed two fingers inside her, filling her as she’d imagined so many times. It was a tight fit, almost painful, but Rey welcomed it. She’d needed this for a year, ever since they’d touched hands the first time. Now she finally, _finally_ had him.

“Say my name again,” he ordered.

So he _had_ heard her. Rey couldn’t find it in herself to embarrassed, not when they’d gone this far together.

She whispered his name. His real name, the one he’d been born with. He’d thrown it away, but she was trying so hard to salvage it. Perhaps he wanted her to.

Ben gasped, like she was the one touching him, and the sound of it nearly undid her.

She’d worked herself up so much before he’d gotten here that she was already close to the edge, and it only took a dozen hard strokes to take her the rest of the way. A shout rose in her along with her climax, but she slapped a hand over her mouth to smother it. Heat shuddered through her, a sharper bliss than any she’d ever known, undoing her from the inside out. All she could feel was _Ben,_ filling her with his fingers and touching her through the Force. Everything in her and everything in him finally entwined, the way they were meant to be.

When the pleasure stilled, Rey watched Ben pull his fingers from her, then lick them.

“I can taste you,” he said, almost wondering, as if the reality of what they’d just done surprised him.

She didn’t know what to say. _Thank you_ seemed too transactional, like he’d done her a service. _I love you_ , sat ready on her lips, but he already knew that, and it didn’t change anything.

Then the connection between them faded, taking Ben away from her. Maybe the taste of her pleasure would still be on his tongue, and maybe not. Regardless, they were back where duty demanded. Separated, as if on opposite sides of a vast ocean, its waters too treacherous to cross.

Rey pulled her blanket up over her body, suddenly cold, and prayed for sleep.

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The Resistance raided the First Order’s coaxium stores on Genthi two days later, only to find it empty. No guards on the walls, all the fuel gone.

“They knew we were coming,” Poe said. “So why didn’t they lay a trap for us?”

Finn looked around, frowning. “Who says they didn’t?”

A wooden trunk sat in the front room of the outpost’s main building, closed and locked. An old-fashioned skeleton key sat on top of it, right at the center, over a metal plate with Rey’s name on it.

When she picked up the key, Finn said, “Don’t open that! It could be rigged.”

“It’s not,” Rey said, as certain as she’d ever been of anything in her life.

She opened the trunk. Inside, she found yards and yards of fine fabric, sewing needles, scissors, pins, and spools of thread. Gifts from Ben, because he knew that she liked to make her own clothes. There were a handful of colors, soft cloth in hues of blue, grey, and green; but most of it was white.

It wouldn’t serve her to speculate too much on why that might be, but the possibilities left her breathless.

“What the hell’s all this?” Finn asked.

“I don’t know,” Rey lied, “but it has my name on it. It might be a message of some kind. We should take it back with us, so I can examine it further.”

Poe said, “It seems harmless, but maybe it’s not. Could have a tracker hidden in it somewhere.”

That was a good point, unfortunately. Which she would have thought of herself if she wasn’t so distracted.

She had to think of something, and quick. Stupid though it was, she wanted to keep Ben’s strangely thoughtful gift.

“The two of you should go home, and I’ll take the trunk with me on the _Falcon_. If anybody follows me, I’ll dump it. If not, I’ll jump to Bastatha to lay low while I study it. I’ll be back within four days, no matter what.”

Finn sighed. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I,” Poe said. “It’s up to you, though.”

Rey touched one bolt of fabric that looked like it might be shimmersilk. White. The color of the light. And of a traditional wedding dress on many human worlds.

That made the decision for her.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take a moment and let me know what you thought of this chapter! :)


	5. On the End of a String

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are curious, [this is the dress](https://southsidestory.tumblr.com/post/186384493656/reys-dress-in-the-next-chapter-of-the-girl-from) that Rey makes for herself and wears in this chapter!

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As far as the Resistance knew, the First Order couldn’t track ships through hyperspace without a ship of their own—but a year ago, they hadn’t thought tracking through hyperspace was possible at all. It wouldn’t be smart to underestimate the First Order’s technology and resources.

Rey jumped to the Yarro System, which was nearly deserted, and not far from Bastatha. It wouldn’t take much fuel to jump there next, assuming Ben didn’t show up with a fleet to greet her. She sat near an airlock, in case she needed to get rid of the trunk and its contents quickly. A proximity alarm would go off if any ships approached. If they did, she’d hopefully have time to get away.

All of these precautions because she couldn’t ignore a box full of sewing supplies. This was beyond stupid, but she needed to see what Ben had given her. There could be a message inside, or a communication device. Things that she didn’t have the time or privacy to look for on Genthi, in the middle of a failed heist with her comrades.

Rey opened the trunk and took out every bolt of fabric, as well as a dozen cases of sewing instruments and thread. There were even containers full of beads. Ben thought she might want to make something pretty, and he’d provided the necessary adornments. Some of the beads were clear or colored glass, but there were more made of metal, pearls, and crystal. She suspected that one tiny box held actual diamonds. If she had the patience, she could make something truly beautiful out of all that.

And at the very bottom, a note. It said _Meet me on Takodana in one standard day_. Handwritten in a flowing script that she’d never seen before. Anything written in longhand was rare these days, much less in a style as beautiful as this. Rey touched the edges of the note, careful not to smudge the ink. It was long dry, but this was too precious to risk ruining.

Takodana. It wasn’t the safest place in the galaxy to meet, nor the most private, but it was where they’d met. Ben—still Kylo Ren to her, then—had terrified her, then taken her. Hardly romantic, and not at all kind, but that was the truth of them.

“Dammit,” Rey said.

She knew what she was going to do, so might as well go ahead. She set the course for Takodana—which would take the better part of the next day to get to—then returned to her sewing supplies and set about making herself a pretty dress.

Rey dug through the materials she’d taken from the trunk. She picked a large bolt of diaphanous, ivory cloth and delicate, airy lace of the same color. Although she’d never had a dress of her own, she knew a thing or two about them. Leia had noticed her interest in clothes (as she noticed everything) and had once let her look through her closet. This wouldn’t be like any of Leia’s gowns or robes, but she knew what sort of cuts worked in a skirt and what didn’t. But first, the bodice. That would be the most difficult part.

She pictured one side of the bodice laying over the other diagonally, together making a frayed, heart-shaped neckline. Simple enough as a concept, but she ruined yards of fabric in her first two attempts, despite taking meticulous measurements. She wanted it to be ruched, to give something of the same effect as the wraps she liked to cross over her chest, but it was much harder to manage on a more structured bodice than with a free flowing material. It took hours to get it right, and then she had to work on the finer details. She sewed on wispy, off-the-shoulder sleeves that, if she’d done it right, would drape down to her elbows. Utterly useless, but she liked the whimsical flair it lent.

Then the skirt, which was much easier. Long, flowing, with a short train. She considered putting a slit high enough to hit her mid thigh, decided against it, and then did it anyway. She frayed one edge of the lace, used it to line the slit, and sewed the skirt to the bodice.

Her fingers were sore, the floor was a mess of discarded fabric strips and snips of thread, and she only had eight hours left until she reached Takodana. When she tried on her dress, it wasn’t too loose to stay on or too tight to breathe in, and that would have to be good enough.

Rey ate two military-grade rations, slept, showered, and checked the time again. Twenty minutes. She had no way to know exactly when Ben would arrive, but she had a feeling that he already had. He was many things, but patient wasn’t one of them.

She put on her dress, and in doing so, realized that she hadn’t made herself any nice underwear. She’d been so focused on perfecting the damn dress that she hadn’t even thought of it.

Rey had been trying not to think about it for days, but Ben had seen her naked, touched her—and, gods, even _tasted_ her. She’d felt him, as surely as if he’d actually been there. The pleasure he’d given her had been difficult to shake and impossible to forget.

_Meet me on Takodana._

If she was honest with herself, she knew that this wouldn’t be an innocent rendezvous. She was heading toward a tryst, and what she had already shared with Ben in an illusion, she was about to give him in reality.

So. Her choices were to wear plain, serviceable panties that did not remotely match her dress, or none at all. She chose none, and tried not to think herself a slag for it.

.

.

Ben was here. She could feel him, the chaotic darkness and steady, stubborn light that defined his presence in the Force.

Ben was here, and she could tell exactly where he was.

Takodana was everything and nothing like she remembered. Green, yes. Beautifully, vibrantly so, and her sense of wonder at it hadn’t worn off. After nineteen years on a desert hell, she doubted that her appreciation for any verdant world would ever go away. But the last time she’d been here, all that green had been a new discovery. Her first taste of anything outside of Jakku. Since then, she’d been fighting in a war, and she knew more of the galaxy—its victories and failures, its beauty and ugliness—than she ever would have wanted to.

Last year, Takodana had been the gateway to a new life. Now, she fought and lied and scrambled to survive in the thick of that new life. It felt like she was coming back around to the starting line of a race that she hadn’t known was on a circular track.

It felt ridiculous to carry her lightsaber in her beaten up satchel while wearing this dress. Now that she was off the _Falcon_ and walking through the forest in her knee-high leather boots, she deeply regretted the flight of fancy that had driven her to make and wear something so impractical. The train dragged across the ground, and she knew without looking that it was already stained by grass and dirt. The dress was comfortable and easy to move in, but still horribly inappropriate for a walk in the woods. Ben would likely laugh himself hoarse when he saw her trussed up in something that looked like a wedding gown. But she so desperately hoped that he wouldn’t.

Finding him was easy. Even if she couldn’t feel his tumultuous presence in the Force, she’d have known where to go. Right back to the start, the place where their minds had first touched.

_The girl I’ve heard so much about._

_We have what we need._

Rey knew, somehow, that Ben had carried her back to his ship himself. She had the faintest memory, just before falling under, of strong arms catching her. Warmth around her, against her, and then darkness.

She found him on the rise where he’d once frozen her. Just sitting there on a blanket, eating a red apple, as if this was somewhere to relax, just like any other. Except, they both knew that wasn’t true. He’d chosen this place precisely because of its significance for the two of them.

Ben stood, the heat of his need sparking between them, and strode toward her. The half-eaten apple dropped from his careless fingers to the grass, forgotten. He didn’t laugh at her. The way his cheeks flushed as he looked her over, his full lips parted and brown eyes hungry, banished her insecurities like they had never been.

“You look…” He swallowed heavily, his throat working. “You look beautiful.”

They had met through the Force so many times in the past year that she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be near him for true. How his voice sounded without an echo following it, and the overpowering, almost overbearing conflux of his emotions when they were this close together. She knew he could feel the same from her, her fears and fantasies and terrifying need. The simple relief that flooded her at seeing him again. The far less simple love that she couldn’t reign in.

She looked for such love in him, but if it was there, she couldn’t find it. He desired her fiercely, but there was so much anger there too. He felt betrayed, like she’d only come to him on the _Supremacy_ for his power; no better than Snoke, only she’d wanted him to serve the Resistance instead of the First Order. And when he’d asked her to rule with him, to _be_ with him, she hadn’t even had the decency to say no. She’d gone straight for her lightsaber ( _his_ lightsaber, really), with every intent to fight him.

_Traitor_ , he thought. _Pretty little traitor._

“I’m not a traitor,” Rey said. “We’ve been over this so many times that I’m sick of the conversation. I didn’t come here to fight.”

Ben closed the last of the space between them and wrapped his hand around her throat. A delicate hold, far too light to be a threat, but still. If he wanted, he could tighten those powerful fingers and choke her until the world went black.

Rey stood straighter. She wouldn’t be cowed. He’d asked her here for a reason, and they both knew what it was.

Ben looked down at her chest. Her breasts were too small for even this low cut dress to show much, but his expression was as rapt as if she’d stood naked before him.

“I see you liked my gift,” he said.

Rey fought the urge to cover her chest and shield herself from his unsubtle attention. She’d made the dress this way precisely because she’d wanted him to look. She just needed to summon the courage she’d had only a few hours ago.

“I do. I like it very much,” Rey said, and her voice somehow came out steady. “Thank you.”

He slid his hand from her throat down to her chest, stopping only when his palm rested over her heart. Oddly, that embarrassed her even more than his presence in her mind, that he could feel her racing heartbeat. Still, it felt good. His bare skin on her bare skin, and it was then that Rey realized he wasn’t wearing gloves.

He wasn’t wearing any part of his usual outfit. He was still all in black, but the cut of his clothes was different. A casual shirt with a less monkish collar than usual, its long sleeves peeking out from beneath a jacket, trousers, a belt, and tall leather boots. She couldn’t help but think it was a style very similar to his father’s, colors aside.

“Don’t,” Ben said.

His fingers curled, coming to points on her skin, his blunt nails just shy of scraping her.

“I’m sorry,” Rey whispered.

She put her hand over his, and felt him relax all at once, the tension bleeding out of him at a single touch. He was such a dangerous creature, volatile and cruel, but with the right handling he could be so easily tamed.

“The last time we saw one another, you left me on a burning ship,” Ben said, though he didn’t sound angry about it. “You knew I’d survive.”

“I wouldn’t have left you otherwise.”

He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to the base of her palm. It wasn’t quite a kiss, but it was close enough to steal her breath anyway. His mouth was so soft, and she couldn’t help but think of it on hers—then of him kissing her in other places.

“If you want,” he said. “Lay down on the blanket.”

Ben let her go so that she could do as she was told. She looked up at the sky, the heart of it framed by a canopy of trees. She kept her gaze fixed on all that blue, encircled by green, so that she wouldn’t have to see Ben taking her boots off of her, then pushing up her dress. She wanted this, maybe more than she’d ever wanted anything, but the reality of making love was so much scarier than the fantasy. What had happened in her hut three nights ago felt like a fevered dream compared to this.

She felt Ben kiss the inside of her knee. “Have you ever…?”

Rey closed her eyes. “Only with you.”

Which meant next to nothing at all, a few phantom touches stolen in the middle of the night.

“And have you, um. Been with anyone?” she asked

A long beat of silence filled the air between them. Then he said, “Yes.”

Rey wanted to ask _who_ , and _when_ , and whether or not he’d enjoyed it. But he probably wouldn’t answer, and even if he did, she wouldn’t like what he had to say. It was stupid that she’d expected him to be inexperienced. She’d once asked Leia about Ben’s birthday, so she knew that he’d be thirty-one soon. Most men didn’t wait that long to have sex, especially if they were even half as handsome as Ben.

If he was remembering his other lovers, he kept those thoughts locked away securely.

She felt him climb on top of her, then the dark behind her eyelids grew deeper, and she knew that he was blocking the sunlight.

“Look at me.”

An order, and there was no give in his voice as he said it.

Rey looked. Ben was bracing himself above her, his arms on either side of her head. His brown eyes seemed sleepy and alert at once, his lush mouth open on panting breaths. He’d taken off his shirt, so she had the whole, fair expanse of his strong upper body to admire. And touch. When she ran her hands from his chest down to his lower stomach, Ben shivered, but he didn’t stop her.

_Kiss me. Please, kiss me._

She thought it as loudly as she could, so it wasn’t a surprise when his lips met hers.

No, the surprise came with how strongly she’d react to such a thing. His touch-but-not had haunted her for months, and now she had the real thing. Only in this moment, with his lips on hers, could she see how pale an imitation their touch through the Force had been. It had felt physically real, but it was nothing to this. Skin on skin, feelings too entangled to separate. A need so fierce that it ached, giving her no choice but to kiss back.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you thought of this chapter, if you have a moment. ❤️


	6. It's Just Us Now

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The kiss seemed to go on forever, outside of time entirely. Ben’s breath mingled with hers, his lips impossibly lush, his taste on her tongue (apple, and something less sweet beneath it). Over and over, their mouths moving together in perfect sync, almost like a dance. Ben was giving her this, her first kiss, and she hoped that he’d be the only one she’d ever share this with.

He kissed her harder, groaning into it. He’d heard that thought, she realized, or at least sensed some measure of it. Rey turned away, wishing she could snatch that truth out of the air between them.

Ben mouthed at her cheek, then her throat. “Don’t be embarrassed. I like that I’m your first kiss.”

Rey almost laughed. “Of course _you_ like it. Just one more thing to feed your ego.”

He hummed as he kissed her collarbone, then her chest. “If you minded my ego that much, you wouldn’t want me to be your only.”

Snarky bastard.

Rey tried to reach into his mind, to see if he felt the same way, but he’d put up a wall she couldn't get past.

Then Ben moved down her body, and her focus shifted sharply to what he was doing. She had almost forgotten the reason he’d told her to lie down in the first place. Remembrance rocked over her when he pushed her dress up around her waist, and she suddenly wished that she’d worn her panties after all, even if they were plain.

She worked up the courage to glance at Ben, and found him looking down on her, his chest heaving, gaze settled between her legs. Dappled sunlight fell across him, shadows playing over his body. That was him through and through, light and shadow entwined.

He opened her legs wider and slid his right hand up her thigh, higher and higher, until his fingers brushed across her mound. She wondered if his other women had groomed down there, and if that was something he preferred. She’d had no way to know that this would happen today, and hardly could have prepared. Now Ben was looking at her again, touching her. Truly touching her this time, and it was far more terrifying than any duel or battle.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be gentle.”

Rey nodded, then lay back and closed her eyes. She ached for him, but if she watched this, she might lose her nerve.

She heard him shifting, and felt his hands grasping the backs of her thighs, pushing them upward until she was more exposed. He must be able to see _everything_ that way. Even parts of her that she decidedly did not want kissed, but she wasn’t brave enough to say so. Not when she already felt like she might die from embarrassment.

Ben parted her with his fingers and made a low noise, too deep to be a moan, but pleased nonetheless. Rey covered her face with her hands and gasped into them. She was on the verge of telling him to stop, that this was too mortifying for her to tolerate—then he licked her, and she’d never wanted to stop anything less.

His mouth was made for this. Either he’d had a great deal of practice, or he was a prodigy. What a ridiculous thought—and then she could hardly think anything. Only feel him kissing, sucking, licking her in long, lazy strokes. It was nothing like the sharp pleasure he’d given her in her hut. This was somehow both tender and vulgar, and nothing about it hurt. It went on and on, the ache of an impending climax building. She’d only ever been able to come when thinking about him, and having him, truly having him, pushed her to edge quickly. But he didn’t let her go over it, because he was a cruel creature.

“Please,” Rey said, and her voice sounded strained, as though she’d been shouting. “Ben. Please.”

_He’d begged her once too, and she’d turned on him, broken him when he’d only just begun to feel whole—_

It took Rey a moment to realize that those weren’t her own thoughts.

“Don’t think about that,” she said. “Just stay here with me.”

Suddenly, she felt him pull away, and before she could say or do anything, he flipped her over. Her cheek was pressed against the hard, blanketed ground, and his swift handling had left her breathless. She felt him undoing the buttons on the back of her dress quickly, roughly, and she hoped he wouldn’t tear one off in his haste. She’d worked so hard to make everything perfect.

Her bodice fell loose around her, and Ben reached underneath her to grasp her right breast. He kneaded her, then pinched her nipple, and Rey heard a pitiful noise leave her mouth. His touch was brutal, but good. So good that when he pushed her dress up around her waist, she parted her legs wider for him.

_Please,_ she thought, but didn’t dare say.

Rey heard him unzipping his pants, and the rustle of clothes as he pushed them down. He was on her in the next moment, his heavy body pressing her against the solid earth. Then his cock nudged against her, meeting her where she needed him most—

She shouted when he pushed inside her. She couldn’t see, but she felt as though he’d thrust as far as her body could take his in one go. It stung, as she stretched and maybe tore to accommodate him, but it felt good too. She’d wanted this for so long that it shamed her, and now she finally had it.

He’d wanted it too, since he’d first seen her in this very place. _The scavenger was such a pretty thing, even in her dirty clothes. But those could be taken off, and he could do whatever he wanted with her—_

Ben shut her out of his thoughts abruptly, but the heat of that memory washed over her anyway. It had only been a fantasy, she knew, nothing he would have actually done, but for a moment she indulged it. Maybe he would have tried to take her right here, the day they’d met, with a battle raging all around, and maybe she would have let him.

She wouldn’t have, of course, but it was a lewd dream that she allowed in this moment. He was making love to her on the very spot where he’d once taken her captive, and Rey didn’t care how twisted it was, but she loved this, and she loved him, and—

Ben rocked into her harder, somehow even deeper, and hissed, “Say it.”

He was always ordering her to give him the most painful truths, and she should hate him for it, but she didn’t. Far from it, and that was what he wanted to hear.

“I love you,” she said. “So much, Ben.”

His silence stung more than the pain where they were joined, because at least that brought her pleasure too. There was no pleasure in being used by a man who didn’t love her back.

No. She wouldn’t let that ruin this. She’d come into this knowing what it was, and what it wasn’t, and she’d wanted it anyway.

It still hurt, but now it felt more good than not, and she arched up against him as well as she could when she was trapped beneath him. Ben gasped, a sound full of surprise as much as pleasure.

Rey sobbed, needing more, everything, all that he could give her. “Don’t stop. Gods, don’t stop.”

He didn’t, and the feeling that had been winding tighter and tighter within her finally snapped. It was bliss, pure and simple, that stuttered through her in sharp pulses, making her cry and shake and shout. He kept going even as it became too much, her body over-sensitive but still needy. Rey endured it and reveled in it, until Ben thrust into her in harder, staccato strokes. She felt a rush of wet, heard his grunt, and then he went still.

She wiped her damp cheeks, brushing away tears. How was it that every time they met, he made her cry?

.

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Their lovemaking had been savage, if pleasurable, but the moments following it were gentle. Like a happily ever after at the end of a bittersweet book. Ben fixed his pants, buttoned up the back of her dress, and pulled her into his arms. They lay that way for a long time, saying nothing.

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Ben finally whispered. “I did mean to be gentle, but…”

“You lost your temper. I know.” Rey tried to snuggle closer, but they were already as close as two people could get. “Don’t feel bad. I enjoyed it.”

Most of it. Not the part where he’d made her confess her love toward no purpose she could see, beyond her humiliation.

Rey kissed his chest. He tasted of salt, and smelled like sweat and whatever soap he used. “No more talking. I just want to be in this moment for as long as I can.”

Ben allowed that, and that was how they stayed until the falling sun dipped below the horizon, the sky turned dark, and the stars came out. Takodana was a warm enough place that the cool evening air wasn’t quite chilly, and Rey truly wouldn’t mind if they stayed here forever.

Apparently Ben did, because he said, “I need to go.”

Rey knew that what they’d done was more than sex, but it still hurt to share this with Ben, only for him to leave right afterward.

“It’s not like that.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’d stay if I could, but if I leave the First Order in my generals’ hands for too long, I’ll probably come back to a coup.”

Rey put her hand on his side and trailed her fingers down his ribs. “Aren’t you tired of that? Always having to look out for betrayal?”

He made a rough noise, not quite a laugh. “You think I’d get more loyalty from the Resistance?”

Well. That was fair, but she didn’t want to say so.

Rey had been so wrapped up with Ben’s gift and message that she’d nearly forgotten what had happened on Genthi. Or, rather, what _hadn’t_ happened.

“If you knew the Resistance was going to raid that outpost, why didn’t you set a trap for us?”

Ben shifted away from her and lay on his back. “I knew it would be a small party, and that you’d likely be in it. I didn’t want to have to fight you, and taking a dozen rebels wouldn’t have been worth the cost.”

“And how did you know about the raid in the first place?”

“You really think I’m going to tell you that?”

She sighed. “No. I guess not.”

Rey sat up, stood as carefully as she could, and tried to ignore the stinging ache between her legs. Now that this was done, and there wasn’t any pleasure to counter the pain, she felt it more acutely.

She’d only taken two hobbling steps before Ben picked her up, bridal style. She felt more than saw his memory of doing this before, back when she'd been his prey rather than… whatever she was to him now. Last time, she’d been dressed in dirty clothes, terrified of him ( _and no less beautiful for it_ , he thought). Now she wore the fine silk he’d given her, and she’d never been less afraid than this, held securely in his arms.

Ben carried her to the _Falcon_ , kissed her forehead, and set her on her feet.

Rey knew she ought to compose herself, behave with some dignity if she could only find any. But this might be the last time she saw him for a long while. She might have to go a month, a year, or more without truly touching him.

She threw her arms around him and hugged him as tightly as she could. He hesitated to hug her back, but after a moment he held her close, if gingerly, like he didn’t know what to do with this kind of embrace.

He probably hadn’t been hugged in years, she realized. Whatever lovers he’d had likely wouldn’t have dared, and no one else would have wanted to.

Rey kissed his throat, breathing in his scent, loving how it was mixed with her own. She’d meant to let this rendezvous exist outside of the war, but now that she had him, she couldn’t just watch him leave.

She cupped his face between her hands, stood up on her tiptoes to kiss him, and whispered, “Come with me. Just come with me, Ben. You said to let the past die, and you were right. If you can let go of the First Order, we can be together. You can start over, with _me_ —”

“Stop it.” He grasped her by her shoulders and shook her. “Is that why you came here? Thought you’d put on a pretty dress, and get on your back, and I’d give up everything for you?”

“No!” She wanted to slap him, but nothing could bring her to hurt him again. “Don’t be cruel. You know that’s not what this was.”

“Do I?” She saw his anger crumble. His lips trembled and his eyes softened, wet with tears. “I can feel what you feel, and I know when you’re lying to yourself.”

Rey tried to pull away from him, but he held her fast, and it left her no choice but to examine her feelings. Fear, that Ben would never love her back. Disappointment, that he wouldn’t come to her side. Love, which refused to be beaten down, no matter how much she wished she could get rid of it. Anger, because giving Ben her virginity hadn’t even budged his loyalties. Somewhere, deep down, she’d hoped it would be enough. But nothing she’d done had been enough, because he was stubborn and hateful and selfish—

She didn’t dare look at him, just stared at his chest, but it didn’t matter, because she could feel the hurt that radiated off of him.

Ben grabbed her chin, and forced her to face him. His eyes were dark, furious. “I found one of your spies, and she squealed like a hog. That’s how I knew about your sad little raid.”

“Stop it,” Rey said. “You’re just trying to make me hate you, and it’s not going to work.”

His smile was sharp and patronizing. “I’m telling the truth. You know I am.”

He let her see for a moment, the briefest flash of Teeri’s interrogation, and it was enough to make her sick.

Rey said nothing. He wouldn’t listen to her if she told him that he didn’t have to do these things. He’d chosen his path, and she didn’t have the power to sway him. Not by opening her heart, and not by opening her legs.

This time when she tried to rip away from Ben, he let her go.

She boarded the _Falcon_ and set the course for Ahch-To. As soon as she was in hyperspace, she took off her pretty dress and looked it over. The train was dirty and a button was missing, a mark of Ben’s rough handling. He’d been impatient and angry with her; she knew that he’d had no intention of hurting her, but he hadn’t been kind about taking her either. Now that she had time to sit with it, she felt ashamed of how much she’d enjoyed that.

It didn’t matter. It was done, and Ben had decided to ruin it. Her beautiful gift had been borne on the back of a comrade’s death, and he’d used that to remind her of her place: always opposite him, never by his side.

Rey balled up the dress and threw it in the trash.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you thought, if you have a moment to comment. :)


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